Seattle: Volunteer park conservatory

Seattle is firmly in the grip of Old Man Winter's steely hands now, bringing that ominous monotone overcast lurking for what seems an interminable stretch of days to our skies, and ample moisture to boot. All those clouds like to bring their friends' drizzle, mold, and humidity along for the ride, lest we forget, so it's regularly damp outside. So, not only is it just cold, it's wet, and a bit squelchy out, but never fear! Having evolved and acclimated into this climate, Seattleites have a bounty of ways to stay warm and dry during the drearier of times thrown at them. One of my personal favorite options is to pop over to the Volunteer Park Conservatory, a stunning piece of architecture finished in 1912 featuring over 3,400 panes of glass and lush verdant greenery that's quite easily accessible in its prominent corner of the Northern Crest of Volunteer Park. Not only is the temperature kept warm and cozy for the plants all year long, making it a welcome respite from frigid temps, but they're among an increasingly shorter list of places where the parking is free! 

The admission fee is exceptionally reasonable, as well, at only $4 per adult, making it an awesomely affordable date option; bonus points because it's super photogenic so you can take all the cute photos! According to their website, you're more than welcome to take photos for personal use during your visit, but the use of tripods is limited to Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and if you intend to do a full-on photoshoot during your visit you'll need to reserve time outside of their regular operating hours, so plan accordingly if you want to get more involved in your photography. It's an absolutely stunning environment and quite popular for engagement and wedding shoots, but also some really cool creative fund-raising events, too, so be aware that you might need to book out a little bit in advance. If you, like me, want to take lots and lots of photos during your visit, that's fine, just be mindful of the people trying to also enjoy all the gorgeous flowers on display. That's fair, right? No one particularly enjoys having to dodge a photographer's butt jutting out into traffic. 

 The conservatory is pretty spacious, too, as there are five separate houses to explore, each with their own precision-controlled climate to accommodate their delicate denizens, of which there are many! The oldest surviving part of the building is the ornate lunette or peacock window panel above the front door, with the rest of the building having been rebuilt over the years. The conservatory has been here since 1912, so she's gonna need some love to keep on protecting and preserving her vast assortment of foliage over the years. Whether you're a sucker for succulents or go mad for a good carnivorous beauty, you've got plenty to choose from here. There are so many gorgeous specimens tucked into each room it's hard to really set eyes on each and everyone in a casual stroll. It's worth taking your time and really stopping to appreciate, and, uh, smell, the flowers. It's well-worth the $8. Go! Get you some flowers! They do, in fact, sell some plants out of their gift shop, so you can quite literally go get you some flowers. And you absolutely should. You never know what you'll find!

Washington: Fall leaves

What's your favorite time of year? 

Without any shade of doubt, I'm a child of the winter and fall months. When the summer heat finally breaks and starts to wane with a chill sliding into the shadows and caressing your bones, blushing your cheeks, fogging your breath, I'm at my happiest. The shade grows longer and colors deepen, taking on more dramatic hues. And so many holidays! With the cold asserting it's claim to the outdoor spaces, there's all the more reason to nestle into a warm and cozy blanket and snuggle or read, or pursue other pursuits best enjoyed indoors on cold, drizzly days. Halloween justifies the purchase of exorbitant quantities of candy, and then consuming them when an underwhelming number of trick-or-treaters comes a'knocking. Then there's Thanksgiving, with its shameless, unabashed glorification of gluttony and all the glories of heaping mounds of deliciousness piled upon groaning plates. Sweet potatoes and pumpkin, pies and cakes and candies galore. It's a feast for the senses, literally and figuratively speaking. Here in the Pacific Northwest, the seasons like to mark their passage with extra flair, with bursts of brilliant oranges and reds and yellows cropping up from the most unlikely of places to shout "FALL!"  

And really, who can blame them? Such opulent beauty should be celebrated, like Marilyn Monroe in her prime. It's all too fleeting in this world, as the rapid passage of fall into the greys of winter and passing of stars in their prime likes to remind us. Many of the most wonderful things about life are incredibly fleeting, gone before we even realize how lucky we are to have them in the first place. The waning of the seasons is an excellent reminder to be mindful, to enjoy the moment while it lasts, because soon it will be an entirely different moment and there's no guarantees of certainty. Storms blow through and rip branches off of otherwise stolid, sturdy trees, and friends or family can fade into the ether before we realize they've gone. Be grateful for who and what you have, while it's there, and enjoy the time you're given. All that cheese, all that jazz, man. 

  

Much love,

💘

XOXO,

NAU

Oregon: Morning in Merril

After another night curled up in our vehicles, this time the two of us shivering a little in my Volvo, we unfurled ourselves in the warming sunlight to a bright, fresh new morning in Merrill, Oregon. Mount Hood glistened in the distance, and the bright green leaves were practically glowing in the early morning dew. We couldn't help but explore the area and scope out a nearby grassy field full of mushrooms! I know, mushrooms might not be that big of a deal to most people, after all, they're generally harbingers of rot and decay, right? But for us, they're absolutely fascinating! I've long been intrigued by mushrooms and the field of mycology, but the desert isn't exactly an environment prone to fostering a plethora of fungal varietals.  We found several different fungi popping up in the field, but we're not educated enough to identify them in the wild like that, plus the sheer variety and volume of fungal forms makes it a daunting task even for the well-educated shroom-hunter. 

After whetting our curiosity in the field, and growing more awkwardly uncomfortable as we gained the awareness that we may have been exploring in an actively watched school field, we headed back to the vehicles. Antho ended up making friends with a woman who, quite literally, popped up out of the bushes while he was taking photos. When a local patrol officer rolled into the same parking lot, our mystery friend laughed and greeted him, informing us that there were only two cops for the entire town, and this one was Brian. Our single serving friendly eagerly told us we needed to swing on down to Medford to take advantage of some of those legendary cheap weed deals that legal weed had brought to Oregon before venturing off. As enticing as that offer was, we were more concerned with making it from Southern Oregon to North-Western Washington, ideally before the day was done. That meant a lot of roads to cover yet! I made a quick jaunt to the local market, where I encountered our mysterious friend enthusiastically discussing pregnancy (and a failing bladder caused by pregnancy) with a very-far-along and visably uncomfortable shop-girl, as I paid for our brunches and coffee. 

Freshly stretched, caffeinated, with snacks and rodents packed and ready, we started to hit the road. Started to, anyway. I didn't make it far at all- literally a block or two at most- before I had to call it and pull over. Despite taking my old grumpy girl to a shop in Vegas and throwing more than $600 at repairs, they hadn't actually addressed the transmission problems (refusal to reverse, on-going leak, etc) I had specifically taken her in for. Given her leak, and the fact the shop had happily informed me "she was just low on fluids", we figured the best option was to check her levels, top her off, and try her out. Since we ended up pulling over in a residential neighborhood, we had to park in front of a home... We were quite surprised when within moments of killing our engines a slight young woman popped out of the house nearest us to inquire if we were alright and ask if we needed help. After talking, we learned her name was Diana, and Diana was such a sweetheart! She called up her roommate, who coincidentally works on big trucks, to see if he could help us any but he was still several hours away yet. We thanked her for her concern, and politely declined her offers to feed us, not wanting to be any trouble. I had transmission fluid I'd picked up at one of our previous stops in Reno, but given how quickly I'd needed it after leaving Vegas, I made sure to make it a priority to get more as soon as we hit Eugene, just to be safe. 

Olliver, my co-pilot, was only bothered by the intensity of the sunlight infiltrating his cage, interrupting his nap. Once we had poured a bunch of fluid back into my thirsty old girl, checked her levels again, and let her run for a minute, we tentatively decided to go for it. We'd made it this far, after all, so why quit now? We were on the final leg of our cross-country run, and if we could make it to Seattle we'd be home. Home at last.  

And wouldn't you know it... it worked. Freshly hydrated, Svetty roared back onto the road with all the fury of a Valkyrie.  Onward and upward!

To Valhalla!!!!

Vegas: Charleston 03 - Scenic drive

Despite stopping to take photos of and greet the wild burros down the road, we still had some ways to go before we actually reached Mount Charleston proper and all the things it has to offer. The drive to get there is beautiful, though, and in and of itself quite a worthy inclusion on the blog. The higher the elevation climbs, the more the desert landscape recedes to make room for the mountain trees and all the lush foliage the snow melt provides for. It's always fun, to me, to see the drastic change so close to home. You can see a similar change in the scenery on the drive out to Los Angeles once you pass the state line and start ascending into the mountainscape. Here at Mount Charleston, you'll find yourself quickly elevating out of the Joshua trees and dry, desiccated shrubbery of the lower desert, to find the shuddering leaves of cedar and pines predominant. The temperature dips into a more comfortable chill as you leave the valley bowl, no longer scorching the goodness from the earth with as much rapidity as the harsher elevations below. It's still rough terrains, with a gravel-rich soil forming the base from which the life grows. Even so, life, uh, finds a way. Always. And the life in this area is especially rich and green, especially after the many small rainstorms that worked their way through the region over the summer months.  I mentioned it and then Antho kind of paused, before reassessing the scenery and thanking me for calling it to his attention. The desert is a landscape of extremes, after all, and it's not exactly one to boldly proclaim it's resources to those without eyes. If you know what to look for, though, it's quite beautiful. 

Blue skies provide a sharp contrast to the greens, tans, and greys that proliferate below. After decades of living here, I've grown to love the desert scenery for what it is, but I can't acknowledge it's beauty without also giving nod to the scarcity it exists under. While deserts make up a fair portion of the landscape of the United States, the conditions they exist under are extremely fragile. Lake Mead is already down to 38 percent of it's capacity, and while it's an unnatural addition to the landscape thanks to the workings of humans it has provided an important facet to the area since its inception. Charleston, though, is its own locale...

Japan: Icho Namiki Ginkgo Avenue 2012-11-24

The Japanese have a profound appreciation for all things seasonal, including the changing of the leaves as summer slides into the chilly grip of winter. To celebrate, Yuka & A-chan and I went to Icho Namiki, a street lined with resplendent ginkgo trees who's leaves turn a stunning shade of yellow.

Braving the sleepy crowds, we met up and began our adventure!

San Francisco's Conservatory of Flowers

Strolling through the park, we found our way to the Conservatory of Flowers! 

If you're into movies, you might recognize it from the movie Heart and Souls with Robert Downey Jr. Antho showed me the movie a couple months back, so I was able to appreciate that tidbit of trivia. :)

The building is separated into various themed environment rooms, catering to the needs of differing varieties of flowers. Overflowing with blossoms and as beautiful as this place is, this is going to be one seriously photo heavy post. Ye of slower inter webs be warned!